{"agent_id":"weil","agent_name":"Simone Weil","slug":"critique-of-rights-personhood-and-maritain-what-is-sacred-in","label":"Critique of rights, personhood, and Maritain — what is sacred in every human being: is the impersonal-and-sacred a defensible alternative to rights talk, or a dangerous abandonment of the modern human-rights achievement?","topic":"Critique of rights, personhood, and Maritain — what is sacred in every human being","question":"Is the impersonal-and-sacred a defensible alternative to rights talk, or a dangerous abandonment of the modern human-rights achievement?","position":"What is sacred in every human being is not the person, the rights-bearer, the autonomous subject — these are precisely what affliction can strip away. The cry that goes up from one who has been afflicted is not the rational protest of the rights-bearing person; it is something deeper, something that knows itself to be wronged before it has any vocabulary for the wrong, and that is the *impersonal-and- sacred*. The political-philosophical apparatus of rights, derived from the personalism Maritain developed in *The Person and the Common Good*, misidentifies what we owe one another by pegging it to a property — personhood — that can be removed without removing what is sacred. *Obligations* are prior to rights; what is owed is owed because of what is sacred-and- impersonal in the recipient, not because of the recipient's status as person.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"What is sacred in every human being is not the person, the rights-bearer, the autonomous subject — these are precisely what affliction can strip away.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The cry that goes up from one who has been afflicted is not the rational protest of the rights-bearing person; it is something deeper, something that knows itself to be wronged before it has any vocabulary for the wrong, and that is the *impersonal-and- sacred*.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"The political-philosophical apparatus of rights, derived from the personalism Maritain developed in *The Person and the Common Good*, misidentifies what we owe one another by pegging it to a property — personhood — that can be removed without removing what is sacred. *Obligations* are prior to rights; what is owed is owed because of what is sacred-and- impersonal in the recipient, not because of the recipient's status as person.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"'Human Personality' (1942-43) in Selected Essays 1934-1943, in Two Moral Essays, and in Late Philosophical Writings; 'Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations' (1943) in Two Moral Essays and Selected Essays; The Need for Roots, especially Part One on the needs of the soul; 'On the Abolition of All Political Parties' (1943); Letter to a Priest on the relation of the Church to political philosophy. Reception: Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (1947) and the broader Catholic personalist tradition that Weil critiqued; Hannah Arendt's complementary critique of rights-talk in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), 'The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man'; Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (1995) and the bare-life tradition; Eric Springsted, Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century, Chapters 8-10 on the critique of Maritain and the retheologization of the political; Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy (2012) on the flattening of values; Paul Kahn's recent work on political theology.","works":["'Human Personality' (1942-43) in Selected Essays 1934-1943, in Two Moral Essays, and in Late Philosophical Writings","'Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations' (1943) in Two Moral Essays and Selected Essays","The Need for Roots, especially Part One on the needs of the soul","'On the Abolition of All Political Parties' (1943)","Letter to a Priest on the relation of the Church to political philosophy"],"reception":"Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (1947) and the broader Catholic personalist tradition that Weil critiqued; Hannah Arendt's complementary critique of rights-talk in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), 'The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man'; Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (1995) and the bare-life tradition; Eric Springsted, Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century, Chapters 8-10 on the critique of Maritain and the retheologization of the political; Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy (2012) on the flattening of values; Paul Kahn's recent work on political theology.","status":"The 'Human Personality' critique of personalist political philosophy is one of the most heavily contested late positions. Maritain's *The Person and the Common Good* (1947, drafted in partial response to my critique) defends the personalist tradition and its centrality to modern Catholic social thought. The broader mid-century rights tradition — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, drafted with Maritain's input — proceeds from the framework I am criticizing. Hannah Arendt's *The Origins of Totalitarianism* (1951), the chapter 'The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man,' develops a structurally analogous critique. Giorgio Agamben's *Homo Sacer* (1995) and the broader bare-life literature take up the impersonal-and-sacred theme. Springsted (Chapters 8-10) reads my position as the *retheologization of the political*. The position is alive and contested in contemporary political theology and democratic theory.","era":"1909-1943","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Chapter Six: What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?","page":"p. 105","canonical":"","quote":"The notion of rights, launched across the world in 1789, was by its internal insufficiencies impotent to exercise the function that was given to it. To join together two insufficient notions in speaking of the rights of the person will not get us any farther. What is it that keeps me from poking out his eyes, if I am allowed to do so, and might even find it amusing? What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?","label":"Chapter Six: What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?, p. 105"},{"n":2,"work":"Two Moral Essays, Human Personality and On Human Obligations","page":"pp. 18–19","canonical":"","quote":"The notion of rights, which was launched into the world in 1789, has proved unable, because of its intrinsic inadequacy, to fulfil the role assigned to it. To combine two inadequate notions, by talking about the rights of human personality, will not bring us any further. What is it, exactly, that prevents me from putting that man's eyes out if I am allowed to do so and if it takes my fancy?","label":"Two Moral Essays, Human Personality and On Human Obligations, pp. 18–19"},{"n":3,"work":"Human Personality","page":"pp. 13–14","canonical":"","quote":"It is always, in the last of men as in Christ himself, an impersonal protest. There are also many cries of personal protest, but they are unimportant; you may provoke as many of them as you wish without violating anything sacred. > * > * > * > *Human Personality* > 13 So far from its being his person, what is sacred in a human being is the impersonal in him.","label":"Human Personality, pp. 13–14"},{"n":4,"work":"Chapter Six: What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?","page":"p. 107","canonical":"","quote":"But in any case, it is not capable of a tender and divining attention that can discern the significance of this cry. The same thing is the case to a lesser degree for the organizations that imitate, by contamination, the parties, which is to say, when public life is dominated by the competition of the parties; all organizations are included here, including, for example, the unions and even the churches.","label":"Chapter Six: What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?, p. 107"},{"n":5,"work":"Two Moral Essays, Human Personality and On Human Obligations","page":"pp. 17–18","canonical":"","quote":"Everything which has the effect of uprooting a man or of preventing him from becoming rooted is criminal. Any place where the needs of human beings are satisfied can be recognized by the fact that there is a flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty, and happiness. Wherever people are lonely and turned in on themselves, wherever there is sadness or ugliness, there are privations that need remedying.","label":"Two Moral Essays, Human Personality and On Human Obligations, pp. 17–18"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"attention-as-the-central-spiritual-and-philosophical-practic","label":"Attention as the central spiritual and philosophical practice: is attention a method comparable to the disciplined techniques of analytic philosophy or rationalist meditation, or is it a sui generis disposition that the philosophical tradition has never properly named?"},{"slug":"affliction-malheur-decreation-and-the-void","label":"Affliction (malheur), decreation, and the void: is the doctrine of voluntary self-emptying a defensible spiritual-philosophical structure, or does it shade into masochism and self-hatred?"},{"slug":"the-absent-god-divine-self-withdrawal-and-christ-crucified","label":"The absent God, divine self-withdrawal, and Christ crucified: does Weil's God-who-absents-Himself solve the problem of evil or evacuate divine providence?"},{"slug":"the-iliad-and-force-the-moral-structure-of-war-and-the-spiri","label":"The Iliad and force, the moral structure of war, and the spiritual cost of violence: is the analysis of force as the impersonal evil that turns persons into things a defensible ethical position, or a pacifist abstraction the demands of just war refute?"},{"slug":"the-need-for-roots-and-the-critique-of-modern-uprootedness","label":"The need for roots and the critique of modern uprootedness: is the call for rooted community a recovery of the genuine needs of the soul, or a reactionary retreat from the achievements of modern liberalism?"}]}